If he had been pre-eminently a draughtsman, like Michelangelo, he
would have reduced his light and shade to the amount strictly necessary
to give that powerful modelling of the figure which is the draughtsman's
means of expression, would have greatly increased the relative size and
importance of the figure, and would have reduced the landscape to a
barely intelligible symbol. Had he been a linealist, like Botticelli, he
would have eliminated modelling almost altogether, would have
concentrated his attention upon the edges of things, and would have
reduced his picture to a flat pattern in which the beauty and
expressiveness of the lines should be almost the only attraction.
For all art is an exchange of gain against loss--you cannot have
Sargent's truth of impression and Titian's truth of emotion in the same
picture, nor Michelangelo's beauty of structure with Botticelli's beauty
of line. To be a successful artist is to know what you want and to get
it at any necessary sacrifice, though the greatest artists maintain a
noble balance and sacrifice no more than is necessary. And if a painter
of to-day is like-minded with these older masters he will have to
express himself much in their manner. He will have to make, with his
eyes open, the sacrifices which they made, more or less unconsciously,
and to deny a whole range of truths with which his fellows are occupied
that he may express clearly and forcibly the few truths which he has
chosen.
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